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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27005194">The Glass</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuildingGsr/pseuds/BuildingGsr'>BuildingGsr</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>CSI: Crime Scene Investigation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 01:14:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,349</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27005194</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuildingGsr/pseuds/BuildingGsr</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Season/Episode: Right after the end of “The Good, the Bad &amp; the Dominatrix” (7x23)<br/>Grissom comes back home after visiting Lady Heather at the end of the episode</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Gil Grissom/Sara Sidle</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Glass</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>First publication: November 17, 2018</p>
<p>

</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Grissom came back home, Sara was in the kitchen, leaned against the table they used for their meals (those few times they shared a lunch or a dinner at home). She was turned towards the sink, a glass in her hand. Grissom took the time to study her while leaving his jacket in the wardrobe beside the entrance door.</p>
<p>Sara didn't move or turn to him, when he entered. She was just standing there, still; the glass in her hand was filled with a finger of a transparent liquid; her sight fixed in front of her.<br/>
Grissom walked down the steps without moving his gaze from Sara and approached her with caution. He stopped at a few steps from her and waited. He stared at her, but she didn't move. She had to know he was there - unless she was too lost in her thoughts...</p>
<p>After a few moments he doubted that.</p>
<p>"Sara?" he called her with a calm voice.</p>
<p>There was no reaction for a few seconds. Then, she emptied the glass in one sip and afterward, with a smooth and balanced movement, she threw it into the sink. When the glass touched the steel, it broke with a dry and tinkly noise.</p>
<p>Grissom disapproved that act.</p>
<p>"Was it necessary?" he <span>harshly </span><span>asked Sara.</span></p>
<p>"Was it necessary to spend the night at Heather's place without making me aware of that?" she replied abruptly, without moving her gaze from the sink. "You're lucky I haven't thrown the glass to you," she added, finally turning a dirty look on him.</p>
<p>She moved from the table and started to gather the pieces of glass in the sink with bare hands.</p>
<p>"Be careful, you could cut yourself..." Grissom advised her.</p>
<p>Sara didn't reply and threw the pieces of glass in the garbage bin. Then, without a word, she moved away in the opposite direction from where her mate had arrived, walking around the table.</p>
<p>Grissom understood that the first move was in his hands.</p>
<p>"Ok, you're angry," he started with conviction, following Sara, "but it's not the case to throw glasses!" he added with an hoping voice.</p>
<p>Sara reached the bedroom and headed towards the bathroom giving no comments. Grissom followed her.</p>
<p>"I mean," he continued, "I made a mistake, all right...and I apologize for that..."</p>
<p>The end of the sentence slowly vanished when Grissom, at the bathroom's door, noticed that Sara had taken her toothbrush together with its cap. That made him stop and reflect, and Sara almost bumped against him while walking out the room.</p>
<p>"However, I think you should hear my arguments," he continued, still standing at the bathroom's door.</p>
<p>He saw Sara grabbing a bag beside the bed - a bag that he had not noticed when he entered the room, and that really looked filled with clothes. He became alarmed.</p>
<p>"Moreover, I could feel offended by your behavior,” he observed, chasing Sara who, always silent, was now walking in the hallway, bag in one hand, toothbrush in the other. That image made Grissom’s blood run cold.</p>
<p>“What kind of man do you think I am?” he exclaimed in the middle of the hallway. “I only forgot to tell you. It’s not the first time that happens…!” He realized that what he had just said might be subject of a misunderstanding with frightening consequences. He quickly rephrased, “I mean it's not the first time that I forget to tell you what I do.”</p>
<p>He concluded to speak that they were in the kitchen again. Sara left the bag on the floor, the toothbrush on the table and opened the fridge. She pulled out a couple of sandwiches and a small bottle of water. She wasn’t reacting to Grissom’s words and was behaving as if he wasn’t there - not even in the shape of Amletic ghost.</p>
<p>“I don’t do it out of spite,” Grissom reflected with himself sotto voce. “It’s just that, you know…” As he was speaking Sara put the sandwiches and the bottle in a paper bag. “It’s just that when I work, I’m very focused...and…” he snorted, annoyed by his own personality, “...and nothing else exists,” he concluded with a deluded voice. “But I didn’t go to Heather’s place with an ulterior motive!” he suddenly protested.</p>
<p>Sara, after taking bag and toothbrush, with the paper bag in one hand, walked around the table, moving on the opposite side from Grissom’s, and headed to the short stairway leading to the sitting room...or to the front door.</p>
<p>“Hey, can you stop a moment?” Grissom tried to calm her down, almost putting himself on her way. “May I know what are you doing?” he asked as Sara passed over him - she withdraw her shoulder a little in order to not bump into him and he didn’t try to grab her. “The bag...the toothbrush…?” Grissom asked again, while Sara was about to climb up the first step, “Come on, Sara...the toothbrush!? Are you leaving? Really?”</p>
<p>He was astonished by his girlfriend’s behavior, but was also aware that she was tremendously capable of doing what he thought she was doing.</p>
<p>At the top of the steps, she headed to the wardrobe. Grissom followed her, climbing up the steps two by two.</p>
<p>“Sara…” he called her, now exhausted and worried, “come on, stop a second. It’s really an exaggerated reaction,” he tried, speaking with conciliatory tone.</p>
<p>Sara had opened the curtain used as door of the wardrobe and, after taken her jacket, she wore it. Then she looked around like someone who doesn’t want to forget anything when leaving a place.</p>
<p>“Sara,” Grissom called her again, “nothing happened. You can’t think that...come on!” The words almost died in his throat as he saw Sara gather her things and walk towards the door - her jacket on, her bag on her shoulder, the bag filled with clothes in her right hand.</p>
<p>“Sara...what are you thinking…” Grissom murmured, now with disappointment.</p>
<p>Sara’s hand turned the doorknob.</p>
<p>"Sara."</p>
<p>The door was opened.</p>
<p>"Sara!"</p>
<p>She moved to get out.</p>
<p>“Damn it, Sara, I love you!” Grissom exclaimed in exasperation. “How can you think that I can do such a thing!”</p>
<p>Sara stopped. Grissom took that as an invitation to continue and started talking fast and passionately.</p>
<p>“I don’t understand! How long have you known me?! Probably I’m not skilled in social relationship. Fine. But I am an honest person. You know that I am. And now you are accusing me of having cheated on you? And you leave? For that?!” He caught his breath. “Are you kidding me?” he exclaimed, incredulous. He laughed in disbelief. "I don’t do those kind of things,” he declared with profound conviction, “And -</p>
<p>“Excuse me?” Sara’s voice suddenly resounded between the walls of the apartment and hushed Grissom for a moment.</p>
<p>“I don’t do those things,” he repeated, articulating the words with more precision.</p>
<p>“Not that,” she corrected him, turning to him and staring at his eyes. “What you said before.”</p>
<p>“I am not skilled in -</p>
<p>“No,” Sara stopped him again. “Before that.”</p>
<p><em>I love you.</em> Grissom immediately thought. He was not able to repeat it.</p>
<p>“You know that,” he murmured, shyly.</p>
<p>“No, I don’t know that,” she replied instead.</p>
<p>“I wrote you the letter…!” Grissom protested.</p>
<p>“The one where you say that you’re not able to express your feelings?” she remembered.</p>
<p>“There was Shakespeare in it!”</p>
<p>“Shakespeare wrote <em>MacBeth</em> too, which doesn’t exactly look like a love story,” Sara noted.</p>
<p>“Actually, in a certain way it is,” Grissom corrected her, “but now I’m thinking that maybe I should have quoted <em>Much ado about nothing</em> in order to make the concept clearer.”</p>
<p>Sara’s lips moved in a reticent smile and Grissom felt like seeing the sun rise in a Scandinavian country after months of dark and dim-light. Then, Sara lowered her eyes, but Grissom thought he had cracked the discontent of his girlfriend. So he tried to persuade her again.</p>
<p>“Come in, close the door,” he invited her, with all the sweetness he could find inside himself.</p>
<p>“I can’t,” Sara replied, keeping her sight on the floor.</p>
<p>Grissom was starting to lose his temper: it was fine that she was mad at him, but he thought all that was turning into a too big drama.</p>
<p>“Sara,” he called her, “aren’t you exag-</p>
<p>“I have an appointment with the dentist,” she stopped him, raising her gaze.</p>
<p>Grissom didn’t understand the usefulness of that information in that moment.</p>
<p>“That’s why I took the toothbrush,” Sara made clear. Grissom was dumbfounded. Sara noticed that and recalled almost teasing him, “Four days ago I told you that my dentist asked me to bring him my toothbrush, in order to see whether it’s to be changed or not.”</p>
<p>Grissom suddenly remembered that and the surprise left him speechless.</p>
<p>“The clothes I have at the lab are dirty, have to be washed,” Sara continued. “I go directly at work after the dentist, so I take the clean clothes with me,” she explained. “That’s the reason of the bag filled with clothes.”</p>
<p>This new revelation made Grissom breathless and, at the same time, made him realize that Sara had been playing with him since he entered the apartment. This realization irritated him.</p>
<p>“You could have told me when I asked,” he commented haughtily.</p>
<p>“<em>Yes, sir, but then I would have missed the pleasure of your company, sir.</em>”</p>
<p>“Great moment to quote <em>Silence of the lambs,</em>” he commented annoyed.</p>
<p>Sara softly laughed and to see her serene bothered Grissom further.</p>
<p>“What about the food?” he asked in an accusatory tone.</p>
<p>Sara’s laugh grew a bit more. “I will have to eat sooner or later. Otherwise, my boss -</p>
<p>“You usually buy it,” her boss objected, just for quibbling.</p>
<p>“I felt like eating something different today,” Sara replied at ease.</p>
<p>Grissom thought about what else he could object in order to vent his wounded pride, but he couldn’t find anything, unless he wanted to look idiot.</p>
<p>“Did you really think I wanted to leave because you spent the night at Heather’s place?” Sara asked abruptly.</p>
<p>Her voice revealed some vanity and that touched Grissom’s nerves in a bad way.</p>
<p>“You broke a glass!” he recalled her drily.</p>
<p>“Well, you broke a dish last week.”</p>
<p>“It slipped from my grasp while I was washing it, you know that,” he defended himself.</p>
<p>Sara knew that was true and accepted that defense offering no reply. An unclear movement in her body made Grissom think that she was leaving again, and that the endless walk began in front of the sink a few minutes before would start again.</p>
<p>“So,” Grissom whispered, speaking vaguely and still a bit annoyed. He thought about something to add or to say. Sara waited in silence and her look seemed to solicit something - a sentence, a gesture. “I’ll see you later at the lab?” Grissom finally asked, still feeling inside an anxiety that needed to be quietened.</p>
<p>“Yes, of course,” Sara replied with placid voice.</p>
<p>“I’m happy that you decided to stay,” he admitted on impulse.</p>
<p>“I never thought to leave,” Sara reassured him. She didn't leave him the time to enjoy the pleasure of that information, though. “But don’t make that happen again,” she commanded in a threatening way.</p>
<p>“It won’t happen again,” Grissom promised like an obedient school child. He moved to approach her, but she stopped him.</p>
<p>“No,” she said, raising one hand to stress her determination. “The fact that I’m not leaving doesn’t imply that I’m not angry.”</p>
<p>Grissom stared at her feeling a bit sad.</p>
<p>“Right,” he commented anyway.</p>
<p>She gestured a goodbye and opened the door completely.</p>
<p>"Sara," Grissom called her name again. She stopped with a foot already out of the door and turned to him. He put on a brave face, and moved a step towards her. “I understand why you...have hostile feelings for Heather,” he said in a low voice. There was no reaction on Sara’s side to that introduction, so he went on. “But you should change your mind on her.” He knew that that sentence would cause an explosion in Sara’s head and left her a moment to deal with it. “She’s not as she appears. She..is a good person,” he added.</p>
<p>“You wish we two become friends?” Sara asked ironically.</p>
<p>Grissom moved another step towards her.</p>
<p>“Well...friends would be the perfection, thus I don’t think it’s a reachable target,” he commented with a hint of glee. He made another step and continued. “Just...don’t be taken in by appearances,” he stopped a step away from Sara - he could smell the fragrance of her hair, she had used the new shampoo. “Heather and I are friends,” he continued, “I don’t deny it, it’s evident. Friends, Sara. Like you are with Greg, or Nick -</p>
<p>“I don’t think it’s the same thing.”</p>
<p>“Greg saw you naked long before I did.”</p>
<p>“Fuck off Gilbert,” she hissed, reclining her torso towards him, “Greg didn’t see me naked, and even if he did, it wouldn’t be under the same circumstances you saw Heather -</p>
<p>“No, Sara. You don’t understand. I’ve never seen her naked,” Grissom contested. A strange calm abode  inside him <span>now</span><span>: the certainty that Sara wasn’t leaving gave him the advantage of being more daring. “I can’t deny that, based on what people understand as intimacy, it’s possible that there might have been some intimacy between us -</span></p>
<p>“Please, don’t -</p>
<p>“Point is,” Grissom stopped her with secure, resolved voice and she shut up. “Point is that, even if it was...what’s the problem?” he asked in a good mood.</p>
<p>“Problem is that you spend nights with her without me knowing.”</p>
<p>“<em>One</em> night. And it was work related…! Well, no.” he corrected himself, “Let’s put it this way: how many people in relation with cases you worked on are you in contact with?” Sara was confused by his question and Grissom didn’t give her the time to reflect. ”Young, old, women, men. You keep in contact with these people and care for them, right? When they get in trouble, you run, and do everything is in your power to help them. Right?” Sara didn’t say anything and Grissom went on. “Heather and I are friends. You like it or not, you want it or not, that’s it. And the other night I went to help a friend. Everybody’s always against her because of her job, and I would like that…” He stopped speaking and sighed. For a moment he breathed the air waiting for the right words to say. “Just don’t be taken by a prejudice. I made a mistake not informing you that I was going to her place the other night. I apologize for that. But if you trusted me, on how Heather is in reality, you wouldn't got mad like this.”</p>
<p>“I trust you, Gilbert, or I would have thrown the glass to you,” Sara made clear. “It’s just that I don’t like her, ok? She too haughty, too flashy in the clothes she wears, too eye-catching, too -</p>
<p>“...beautiful?” Grissom objected.</p>
<p>“Smart. Too smart,” she corrected him severely. She lowered her eyes and reticently added, “And well, yeah...too beautiful.”</p>
<p>She turned silent, thinking about how much she still felt the need to prove herself to be up to Grissom. He understood that and reached one hand, moving a lock of Sara’s hair behind her ear. That movement woke her up from her thoughts and in reply she moved Grissom’s hand away. She made a step and stopped just beyond the door. She didn’t need his compassion.</p>
<p>“I see you at the lab,” she said, staring at Grissom as stationary as a Swiss Guard.</p>
<p>“You really must go?” Grissom asked, with a nuance in his voice that Sara knew all too well.</p>
<p>As he was uttering that invitation, he raised his left arm and leaned it, folded, to the back of the door; his fingers held the door by its border at his head height. In search of a balance, door and man swung a bit backwards and forwards, and when that balance was found, both stood still perfectly matching in such a relaxed pose to make one think that door and man had come into the world to meet in that moment, giving an aura of perfection to everything was them around.</p>
<p>How was it possible that a human being could be so naturally as much as unconsciously beautiful was something Sara was not able to understand. They were moments; like those moments of light that two exposed wires, forgotten dangling from a ceiling in the air of a patio after some construction or restoration work, give to a bulb every time a breeze move them and make them touch. Wind is unpredictable, in its being foreseeable, and each time it gives a bit more of light to the surroundings, in daytime or nighttime. That light, then, by reflection, enlightened Sara all the times; or, better, went through her, because she always felt transparent in front of those moments, in front of that light so sudden and unexpected that she had no time to prepare and raise her protective shields. And she felt transparent that time too, in front of Grissom who, inside the house they lived in, invited her to come in. As tempting as just he didn’t know to be. Or maybe that was the way only she saw him.</p>
<p>Sara blushed at that thought. She blushed at the thought of how much she loved him, of how much she felt frail and how much strength he was giving her without knowing. He was giving her the strength that she, throughout her life, had had to find just in herself. He knew her like nobody else, the only one on the whole spherical surface of the planet. A planet so small in comparison with the rest of the universe, but that he was able to make immense, as if the small Earth included the vastness of all existing galaxies (and maybe, isn’t it just that?).</p>
<p>But Grissom had spent the night at Heather’s place, Sara suddenly remembered. The sudden loneliness she felt when she had heard the news, had made the Earth become again the little flea on the ass of the universe that it is. The problem wasn’t him. The problem was her. Grissom was right when saying that her reaction was exaggerated. This was because he thought it was just caused by the Heather affair. In fact, Sara had realized that it was useless to deny it: she wasn’t still feeling good, something was still prodding her soul. Everyone has something prodding their souls, but Sara knew that her prod was something different, something deeply-rooted in her; something rooted to which she had only cared for all those years to cut all the new buds, but that she had to eradicate completely sooner or later.</p>
<p>She would understand all this more clearly only some time later, when Natalie kidnap her, but the recent events relating Heather gave her a cue. All it took to crack Pandora’s vase was just one night. How much would have taken for that vase to break completely? Would she have been able to fix it? She knew she would have to find the necessary strength, in the case.</p>
<p>“Now I really must go,” Sara said out of the blue. She said it lost in thought, a bit in a rush. Grissom wasn’t happy about it, but he accepted the state of things.</p>
<p>“I’ll see you later,” he replied. He was relieved that, for once, work was on their side, or at least on <em>his</em> side, so he could see Sara after a short time, while he probably wouldn’t have seen her for days otherwise, after the Heather thing.</p>
<p>Sara felt a heart-wrenching want to cry growing inside her. She held the strap of her bag a little stronger.</p>
<p>“See ya’,” she said. A smile showed up on her lips, but her eyes were two lakes under a cloudy sky.</p>
<p>She walked away without turning back, nervously playing with the keys of her car.</p>
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